Consilience

My coffee habit is more or less broken. If I'm going to drink caffeine, I'll usually do green tea. The place I'm living at has really low quality coffee which makes me just not interested in drinking... haha. Which has helped dramatically cut back on caffeine. Oddly enough, the fatigue associated with caffeine withdrawal, at least in low amounts, seems to be counteracted by all of the meditation I'm doing. With sufficient mindfulness, fatigue and mental dullness turns into energy.

Sure. My main practice is not vipassana, at this point it is the do nothing technique, also called silent illumination, just sitting, shikantaza, dzogchen, or surrender. Just for clarification, vipassana is not body scanning. Body scanning can be a form of vipassana, but really vipassana as a practice is when we're intentionally paying attention to one or some combination of the three marks of existence, the casual nature of phenomena, or emptiness. It's not body scanning, but body scanning can be a focus space when practicing vipassana. So for example, if I'm ever formally practicing vipassana, I 99% of the time will use Shinzen Young's See Hear Feel technique, which has a focus space of all sensory phenomena. I also enjoy practicing breath focus as well if my nervous system feels out of harmony or if I just feel like it. Yes I typically find body scanning to be not as exciting as other practices, however boredom is actually an emotional response indepedent of the sensations of the body. When we've developed enough access concentration, whether momentary or single pointed access concentration, body scanning becomes deeply interesting. The body can start to dissolve into feeling like waves or merging with space. The only reason the body doesn't feel that way right now is that the mind is so dis-harmonized and caught in subliminal craving and aversion, out of this lack of clarity emerges the mirage of solidity and individuality. If you have trouble accessing deep states during meditation, I would recommend looking into the book The Mind Illuminated or looking into Shinzen Young's See Hear Feel technique. Each is extremely rewarding to practice and each has enormous depth.

Just wanted to say thank you guys for the support. I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to everyone but reading the reports, reflections, and support means a lot. And lastly, regardless of where you're at, thank you for your practice. The impact one's spiritual path has on the world can be so subtle yet so significant.

God is not lonely. This is an egoic interpretation of absolute truth, an anthropomorphism of God. God is so far beyond humanity it's impossible to imagine... And incredible difficult to directly experience given how biased the mind is towards its human activity. When pure, infinite, interconnected unity is felt, loneliness is an impossibility. If we're going to anthropomorphize, it may be more accurate to say God created separation for the sheer joy of creation, yet part of the infinity of God's creation includes loneliness. In the absolute, unmanifest, ultimate reality, ie the way things really are, there is no loneliness. There is only peace, there is only truth.

How many meditation retreats have you gone on?

@Shambhu High quality share as usual... Just throwing a random definition out from my own experience - Liberation can be described as the direct experience of perception no-longer entangled with itself. Perceptual non-interference has been seen so clearly, developed so completely, that all possibility of objects, time, space, self, other, and suffering cease. This clear seeing directing, palpably coming into contact with the space out of which space, time, and all perception arise and pass back into, moment after moment. It is an encounter with infinity, God, absolute now. One practical way to access this clear seeing is to use Shinzen Young's Gone technique. It helps attention begin to stablize on the space from where perception is arising out of and passing back into. This technique helps attention stablize on the the underlying context of all experience, which also happens to be God. Combine this with hardcore self inquiry and you'll accidentally liberate yourself.

Haven't read through the post, but just answering the thread title. YES. Spiritual work has deeply healed my own anger issues. I used to be such an angry person, to the point where I'm pretty sure it was my anger issues that gave me my autoimmune condition. Or at least a large part of it. Getting a chronic disease was part of my wake up call that how I was operating was deeply unsustainable, damaging not only my external relationships, but my physical body at a cellular level. - Daily meditation - Yoga - Psychedelics - Emotional processing/circling/psycotheraputic practices - Meditation retreats These have all played a significant role with healing my anger. The most powerful have been daily meditation, meditation retreats, and psychedelics. Great part is, all three of these practices have many benefits beyond healing anger.

Such an amazing share! Thank you for posting this. ❤️

I would just say the awake dick measuring contest is more mental garbage you need to work through if you’re actually interested in Awakening, which it’s clear you’re not. Of course the Buddha is imaginary, all of life of a dream. Your point? The real fruit is so radical you will not cling to or incessantly seek peak experiences.

The most important rule with this type of sitting and sitting in meditation in general: Do not harm the physical body. If you have injuries, seated practice will look very different for you than others. Sitting for long periods can also be undulated with chairs, standing, or lying down in a position where you won't fall asleep. But yes, as important as these other areas of life are, meditation practice will serve to bring more harmony and happiness to all of it. Following this instinct is the most important move you'll ever make in life, in my view.

@Breakingthewall Yeah... Jesus on the cross is definitely a symbol that comes to mind as one encounters this collective amalgam of suffering. I'm very glad the post resonated.

@Shambhu Thank you so much brother You are certainly not most people either. The depth of your practice comes across in your posts and they're always a joy reading. Psychedelics are a poor substitute indeed, but their allure makes perfect sense from my pov. Expecting most people to do the amount of work I've done or even you've done seems like it would be an unreasonable expectation? I'm not sure what is reasonable to expect, honestly. I'm still floored by how deep meditation goes and continually humbled at how much work left there is to do. Unfortunately, most don't make it to the point where enough momentum is built to see the staggering results that are possible. Even more unfortunately, most people don't understand that the results with meditation start to unfold non-linearly. For most seekers, psychedelics will be a more powerful experience than practice. But once practice starts to rival psychedelics... ?--> ❤️ Anyways, thank you again! I am so appreciative of your support.

Thank you fam. Hopefully it resonates. It's paradoxical because yes, wholeness, complete happiness is a quality of this moment, but this happiness doesn't exclude the horrors of the world, nor the grieving of such horrors. The happiness of awakening is independent of perceptual conditions. This is radical. This claim is absolutely radical. It means that the grieving, pain, and even suffering, when held in the view of Awakening, is happiness. Your description of the world seems more in line with an Arahant's view, whereas mine is more in line with a Bodhisattva's. My personal awakening means very little to me if it's not helping to bring harmony to other beings. To treat the world as an insubstantial illusion, while a perfectly accurate view, feels too contracted and self oriented. Best of luck to your journey as well friend.

The changing of one's mental habits is a by-product of the real fruit - clearly seeing into the nature of reality. The process of purification is not done to change or transform the self. This would actually add to the sense of self. Purification when held with "right view" is used to uproot the mental activity preventing one from insight, consciousness and God-realization. The claim has been made that you've had deeper awakenings than the Buddha and that meditation is a waste of time if one is interested in awakening. This post would imply this is not the case.

Forum won't let me edit post, made a typo with the schedule. Lunch time needs to be labeled with "pm" and evening times are labeled as "am", but should be labeled with "pm".

This is one of many forms of “swarm warfare” that could rapidly escalate to nuclear war. Wasn’t expecting this to spread from the inside out though. While this may seem like a positive, given the complexity of what is happening and how aggressively Russia’s social and financial infrastructure is collapsing, we’re in a very dangerous situation.

@RickyFitts @nistake Thank you both ?? ❤️ @RickyFitts That’s amazing! Had no idea you practiced at that intensity. Yes… ironically, the more I let go of state chasing, the more radical states can become. But what you said it crucial, the essence of meditation is not about manufacturing mystical experiences, but recognizing what is being sought is already present. The paradox though is that without deliberate practice, the possibility of self deception is huge.

Im at a point in my practice where meditating can feel like 50 - 70ug of LSD and that’s just.. normal. Wild, outlandish meditative experiences just happen, regularly now. Less in a perceptual intensity but in the awareness of direct consciousness; this consciousness is extremely palpable, obvious, self illuminating, self liberating, and effortless and continues to increase in intensity as I keep up the rigor of practice. There’s a spaciousness and emptiness to experience that I walk around with. The idea of life being a dream is not a philosophical concept but an experiential observation and embodiment. Solipsism is a joke compared to Absolute Unity, and interdependency. The sense of self is fluid, expansive, contractive, I can detect people’s emotions much more easily. Because Ive also been doing a large amount of strong determination sitting, my relationship with pain is radically transforming. Basically pain tolerance is much much higher than it was even 3 months ago. Craving for junk food, porn, masturbation is at an all time low. Very high amounts of emotional ease, happiness, peace. Im more honest with others and how I communicate. I literally just dont feel bored now. At this point Ive accessed deeper “states” of “God” meditating than many of my earlier psychedelic trips. When I see Leo shitting on meditation I find it both hysterical and sad because he’s leading so many people away from the path that actually Awakens us. Using 5MeO for the rest of your life just isnt it, and observing Leo’s lack of embodiment and shadow come out on the forum and in videos makes this increasingly clear. It‘s blind leading the blind, yet because of his success with Actualized many assume he must know what he’s talking about when it comes to spirituality. In many ways he does, in many ways he’s utterly and completely deluded, like with how meditation works and how to achieve crazy results with it. He’s cornered himself into such determined arrogance, that Im not confident he’ll ever snap out of the self-deception. Anyways, the thing about this intensity of practice is that it’s become extremely pleasurable not in an overt perceptual sense, but in the radical recontextualization of basically all facets of life. I see the relationship between how much Im suffering in the background of life, and how by purifying the conditions of this suffering, Im also coming into deeper union with truth. And this authentic (re: watch out for neo advaita bullshit) union with truth that transcends all states is the path of Buddha’s, and is the path the self most deeply desires. Im realizing how precious and rare it is to actually be on the path pursuing it at full force and feel immense gratitude that reality somehow manifested the conditions for me to be legitimately on it.

Lmao. Where did Leo say this? For the past 1.5 months Ive been meditating 3 hours per day, can confirm it is not horseshit, at all. It’s… absurdly powerful to say the least.

Relative, relational knowledge is a function of cognition (mind), cognition (mind) is a function of consciousness. Knowing of actuality is the most authentic, trustworthy knowledge as it leaves 0 room for epistemological debate. Relative, relation knowledge, by virtue of its building blocks on a multitude of ontological scales, is never fully true or false, and therefore cannot be absolutely true.

So much to unpack here, my guess is it would takes most beings lifetimes to understand.

Rigorous meditation.

Well it may be a little late, but today and tomorrow I would increase your daily sitting to around 4 hours per day as a means of building momentum before the formal day 1. Unless you’re looking for the whip lash of not as intense practice to extremely intense practice. Id also recommend letting go of all expectations of how the retreat is supposed to go or feel. It’s common for people to be blissed out, go through excruciating difficulty, total neutrality, or some combination of those three. Remember, (and this is a HUGE insight I would guess the majority of meditators don’t understand about meditation) what is happening in one’s experience or mind at the surface, what is clear and recognizable moment to moment, is not always indicative of what is happening in the depths of mind and consciousness. Imagine the surface of the Earth before an earthquake - many shifts in tectonic plates are taking place underneath the ground, the overwhelming majority of which cannot be felt or perceived. All it takes is one tiny shift in the tectonic plates and suddenly a massive earthquake erupts. Likewise, deep transformations and “progress” can be made with meditation despite the fact that no surface level or gross manifestations of mind are changing. Many people give up on meditation before these profound earthquake moments can happen. It’s best to keep practicing despite what is happening at the surface level of mind and emotion. In my opinion, it’s best to not take seriously our surface level emotions and thoughts. The deeper, more intuitive clarity and wisdom as a result of the retreat will emerge on its own and be self-validating. Yet in order for that clarity/wisdom to arise, we need to let go and surrender to the practice, retreat structure, and all attempts at manipulation. Let the pain, fatigue, boredom, and doubt filter through you without resistance, thereby purifying the mind rather than creating suffering. Last thing, sign up for your next retreat immediately after you finish. To get the most out of serious meditation practice, annual retreats are the minimum. Have fun!

I've done enough strong determination sitting and had enough results with the practice to see where it leads long term, and under extreme training. I believe it is entirely possible for the human mind to uproot the aversion to pain, but the amount of practice required to achieve this is so incomprehensible, I'm not confident one could do it in a single lifetime unless they completely devoted themselves to the path of liberation.

Meditation and purifying the mind to be totally at midst with discomfort and pain through things like waking up early, rigorous exercise, strong determination sitting, cold showers, eating healthy, doing the work, walking the path. You'll find your body/mind naturally starts doing the things it most authentically values when it can have equanimity with discomfort.